Saturday, July 24, 2004

Raven

I saw the raven
Through the bathroom window
Just after dawn
Blacker than dark thought
As large as a cat
On the lawn

At first
He was shy
Unlike hedge sparrows and chaffinches
Who are anybody’s
The slightest movement
And the raven would be gone

But we slowly became acquainted
And I asked him about his image
The grim associations with death
The fall of the tower
And all that quothing

It can be tiresome, he said.
When all you ask for is a quiet life.
A nest below a granite brow
A mountain view
That’s all I need.
Or a newly raked garden
And some seed

4 comments:

Wastedpapiers said...

Are you sure it was a raven? Some of those crows can look quite hefty after a big breakfast.

Roger Stevens said...

It probably was a crow, although a very big one. But it's a poem! That was just the starting point. Poems, like stories, can be made up. The raven that was really a crow didn't really speak, either. Well, it did, but I had to edit a lot of what it said and change it around to make it more poetic.

Wastedpapiers said...

Are you sure it was a poem? Some of those poems can look really hefty after a big breakfast.

Roger Stevens said...

Yeah. It was definitely a poem. A big black one. I know a poem when I see it. Oh yes!